Interesting stuff in the FOI vault

DOUG COLLIE presents a few nuggets from the recent Freedom of Information updates at Scottish Borders Council

The Freedom of Information archive which forms part of Scottish Borders Council's sizeable website had, until recently, lain untouched since July. But now requests and responses for the four missing months up to November can be seen on the updated web pages.

Here at Not Just Sheep & Rugby a few of the recently published entries caught our eye.

They encompass a wide range of topics from staff relocation costs and pothole compensation to the cost of the Borders Schools Public Finance Initiative (PFI) and the amount spent on agency staff at Scottish Borders Cares, the company which provided home care for elderly and vulnerable clients until it had to be wound up at the beginning of December.

A requester asked the council for the number of employees who have had relocation costs covered to work in the local authority, and the amount paid to those employees since 2011. The applicant also wanted the information broken down by job type.

The following details were released by SBC:

Year       Relocation Costs Paid £

2011/12 19233.00

2012/13 6991.34           

2013/14 12807.39

2014/15 6572.33

2015/16 8694.78

2016/17 4190.74

2017/18 12219.16

2018/19 4539.89

The council added: "Unfortunately we are unable to provide the post title and the number of employees where relocation expenses have been paid as per your request, as Scottish Borders Council does not hold this information in a recorded format."

The poor state of some of the region's roads appears to have cost the authority a significant sum during financial year 2018/19 with 350 claims from drivers who suffered pothole damage to their vehicles.

A FOI request was made in the following terms:

1. I am wondering what your pothole/road defect compensation claims process is. Is it internal or passed out externally to a company?

2. How many Pothole compensation claims did you receive in the last financial year? April 2018 to April 2019. 

3. What was the total value of pay outs for these claims?

4. What was the highest amount of compensation paid out for a single claim in this time period?

Response:

1. Public Liability claims relating to potholes/road defects are passed to Scottish Borders Councils insurers, Zurich Municipal.

2. 350

3. Payments so far have totalled £31,317.00

4. £2,797.37.

The highly controversial 2007 initiative to construct three new Berwickshire secondary schools (Eyemouth, Duns and Earlston) under the extremely expensive PFI arrangements was the subject for an information request lodged in August.

Here is a comprehensive copy of the request and response which appears on the website: Request -

1) The projected total (whole life) cost of the scheme, in £, detailed when the scheme was first agreed (i.e. the original projected cost of all Unitary Charge Payments over the full life of the scheme).

2) The projected total (whole life) cost of the scheme, in £, as at August 1, 2019 (i.e. the real cost for previous years and projected cost for future years of all Unitary Charge Payments over the full life of the scheme).

If there is a difference between 1 and 2, please can you provide details of:

A) The date(s) the projected costs changed

B) The reason(s) the projected costs changed

Please can I also request: 3) A copy of the original contract/agreement;

4) An itemised list of any payments made to the PFI contractors for services not included in the original PFI deal, from the beginning of the deal to the current date, and to include exact details of what was being paid for.

Response

1)  £312,902,351 at financial close

2)  £302,237,514 at 31 March 2019

      A)  At handover and every year with inflation adjustments.

      B)  Phased implementation and annual RPI movements.

3)  Redacted copy attached, Some third party personal information has been redacted from the attached document as it is exempt from disclosure under 38(1)(b) of FOI(S)A 2002,  There is some further information redacted,  The Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 allows a public authority to withhold information in response to a request, where one or more exemptions listed in FOI(S)A applies. In this case Scottish Borders Council believes the following exemption applies: S33(1)(b) Protecting Commercial Interests. We have considered the public interest test and it will always be in the public interest for the Council to obtain best value and by disclosing this information would prejudice this.

 4)  None

Finally, the ill-fated SB Cares LLP, the company set up by SBC to run home care services from 2015 onward appears to have required the services of agency staff during its relatively short existence.

In September a FOI requester asked:

Please list the total amount of money SB Cares has spent on Home Care Agency Workers during 2016/17, 2017/18 and to the date of processing this FOI request. Please include a breakdown of wages, travel expenses, accommodation costs and any subsistence allowance. Please list the Agencies which SB Cares has used for delivering Home Care.Please list the locations where Agency workers have had to travel from in order to deliver home care in the Borders.

Response:

2016/17   Caddon Healthcare £10,301.06 - total   £10,301.06.

2017/18  Scottish Nursing Guild £6,502.62 Caddon Healthcare £942.42 Ranstead Care £677.95

Total - £8,122.99.

2018/19  Scottish Nursing Guild £137,878.92 Caddon Healthcare £27,098.73 McSense Communication £200.25 Total - £165,177.90.

2019/20 @27/09/19  Scottish Nursing Guild £21,796.66 Caddon Healthcare £14,522.00 Total -

£36,318.66.

There isn’t this level of breakdown on the invoices that we receive from the agencies, therefore the Council is not able to provide the information regarding breakdown of wages, travel expenses, accommodation or subsistence allowance nor the  locations where Agency workers have had to travel from in order to deliver home care in the Borders.